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1   /*
2    *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
3    *  or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
4    *  distributed with this work for additional information
5    *  regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
6    *  to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
7    *  "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
8    *  with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
9    * 
10   *    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
11   * 
12   *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
13   *  software distributed under the License is distributed on an
14   *  "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
15   *  KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
16   *  specific language governing permissions and limitations
17   *  under the License.
18   * 
19   */
20  
21  package org.apache.directory.api.asn1;
22  
23  
24  /**
25   * <p>
26   * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. This is the sister
27   * interface of {@link Decoder}. Every
28   * implementation of Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows
29   * a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec
30   * package.
31   * </p>
32   * 
33   * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a>
34   */
35  public interface Encoder
36  {
37      /**
38       * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The
39       * Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s
40       * depending on the implementation used.
41       * 
42       * @param object An object to encode
43       * @return An "encoded" Object
44       * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a
45       * failure condition during the encoding process.
46       */
47      Object encode( Object object ) throws EncoderException;
48  }